


& tea in the mornings, & two beds pushed close

by virgil



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, cute dumb stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 04:09:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19221301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virgil/pseuds/virgil
Summary: Link and Zelda in the months after the fall of the calamity, two cautious and wounded beings falling in love





	& tea in the mornings, & two beds pushed close

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this on a train!!!!! i wanted to write something cute

She loved the mornings.

She didn’t, at first. At first every wake was a reminder of things lost. It was so hard to forget, after a hundred years of trying not to. It is one thing to lose friends, but to lose a place, a time, a world, to the past was too much. Even the air smelled different now, even if Kakariko village was barely changed. The markets still lively, the children running and shrieking around the stalls.

In the mornings, at first, the children reminded her too much of the Zora, before the Calamity. She used to watch over them, in the nurseries underneath the great waterfalls. It wasn’t until later in her and Mipha’s relationship that the Zora girl felt comfortable enough to ask Zelda to the sacred places where the young would play, splashing in the shallow water. Zelda loved the way they would pounce and leap, learning their own bodies for the first time.

The first few weeks felt like that to Zelda. After the fall of Ganon, the princess was once again mortal, freed from being a prison. It was hard, then. Or, it would have been hard, if not for Link. 

The boy was different now. She could feel it in the way that he carried her. His steps were looser now. Her body, still recovering from years of disuse, was a rusty mechanism, and he did his best to coach her through those early days.

First just food, water. Later, the mornings were consumed with small tasks. Strong tea as the sun broke over the mountain, and his hand on hers to stop the shaking. Soon she felt good enough to walk again, her arm linked with his. Soon again, able to ride a horse. She was feeling as herself again, slowly. Patiently. She had waited a hundred years, she could wait a few more weeks.

He had told her, of course. It took him too long, and she often teased him for it, but she could barely begrudge him. He was not that much of a talker. It was obvious, she thought. In the night, when the painful dreams came to him, he would reach for her. And she, of course, would hold him, to quell the shaking, as he did for her so many countless times. She traced the scars on his back, the wiry contours of his physique. The boy with the golden hair, kept long and shaggy.

She thought it was cute, how he would blush and avert his eyes when she laughed at his jokes in the early days, like he was unsure how to react when she found him endearing. After the first few weeks, it was easier. He opened up, showed her everything that he learned in the time after his awakening, how the storks in the meadows would stay still if you approached quietly in the tall grass; how the fish would dart away if you disturbed the top of the water; how to roast a fresh hunt over the fire.

He never was like this before. In the Before, he was stiff, nervous. Almost dogmatic. But here, there was no castle. No crown, no court, no order to be maintained. Hyrule was a beautiful wide open land and for the first time even she saw it as such, like a great long exhale after a hundred years of holding breath. And when her eyes opened, of course she saw him.

He had told her on the first day of the second week. How much he blushed, how much he rubbed the back of his neck and looked away until she held his chin up and for the first time they kissed, and it felt so right and good and unbreaking. From then on there were no secrets. From then on there was no pushing of the bed away out of courtesy before sleep.

Everything felt so different now. On her request, he took scissors and cut her hair short. She insisted he do it, just as she insisted he keep his locks long, shaggy, and golden. Just as when she first saw him, just as she liked. He laughed at that. She did too, and knew that this was the type of person she could call home with. So she asked, and he obliged, as of course he did.

The marriage was simple, a far cry from the one she would have received in the Before. She liked this more. As expected from a wedding of their small celebrity, it was well attended, and the gifts came from all corners of Hyrule. Her gown was a dazzling white, a gift from the Queen of the Gerudo; Link wore the finest of royal blue formalwear, equivalent for a man of his stature. He tore it off, of course, as soon as someone mentioned swimming, and Zelda remembered more the glint of his earrings in the evening sun than any outfit he wore. The drinking went well into the night, and the songs even longer.

She loved the mornings now, because they meant strong tea and his face. Mornings meant one more reminder that the world was rebuilding slowly, and that scars do not fade but they do heal. Slowly, with patience. Her hands no longer shook but he would still take them, often.

She liked that.


End file.
